Manhattan stabbing victim used last words to name ex-boyfriend as killer: family

With her dying breath, a woman who was stabbed to death outside her Manhattan apartment building by a killer lying in wait said the boyfriend she’d recently split with did it, according to relatives.

Shirley Rodriguez, 29, was bleeding on the sidewalk early Monday morning outside the Washington Heights apartment building where she lived with her family when she fingered Tyquan Jemmott, 33, family said.

Rodriguez’s mom, dad and sister rushed down the stairs of the building at W. 172nd St. and Haven Ave., where they heard her screams and saw her blood.

The victim’s sister said she and her parents came across a horrifying scene after her sibling rang the buzzer and they dashed down.

“She turned to me and she said, ‘It was Ty,'” said the 32-year-old sibling, Tibby. “She was standing in between the two cars. The wound I saw was her face … I think he stabbed her in the head, too.

“There was so much blood. It was everywhere. All over the steps, the cars.”

Henry Rodriguez, the victim’s father, said his daughter had called an Uber, then started buzzing the intercom a short time later.

“She was calling for help,” he said. “She said, ‘Dad, dad, hurry. Come downstairs’ So I threw something on and I went downstairs with a kitchen knife because obviously something was up. I ran down the stairs and it was just a bloody scene. And my daughter was standing there with a big gash on her face.”

An Uber driver there told the father the attacker was dressed in black and ran down the street toward a park.

“My instinct was to chase him, but I couldn’t leave her by herself,” said Henry Rodriguez. “She was bleeding. He was gone. Somebody else chased him.”

Cops later arrested Jemmott, who lives in the Bronx, police said. He was taken into custody on suspicions of killing Rodriguez while he was at his uncle’s house, which is in the same borough.

While in custody, he was sent to an area hospital after complaining that he felt ill, cops said. On Tuesday afternoon he was charged with murder and weapon possession. .

The Uber driver recorded the carnage and played it for the dad, who said he couldn’t watch it again after viewing it twice.

“I don’t need that to be replaying in my head,” he remarked.

Shirley Rodriguez was rushed shortly after 5:30 a.m. to Harlem Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Later Monday, Rodriguez’s devastated parents wailed as they rubbed their hands through the slain woman’s blood, which stained the hood of a Hyundai outside the building.

Family members said she was on her way to her 6 a.m. shift as a lab technician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The killer was lying in wait behind a car as Rodriguez walked to a double-parked Uber, cop sources said.

Police said the attack lasted a minute. Cops have video of the killer slashing, stabbing, punching and dragging Rodriguez as she bravely fought back. Several bystanders including the Uber driver called 911. Police said two men chased the suspect along Haven Ave., but he got away.

But that did little to ease the pain or quell the anger in the hours after the brutal killing.

Rodriguez broke it off with her boyfriend last week, her sister said. They had been dating for about two years.

Tibby, who did not share her last name, said she wasn’t surprised when her sister said the ex’s name.

“Who else could’ve done it?” she said. “Unless it was some random person. He was harassing her. I wasn’t surprised.”

Still, she said the family felt betrayed because they had been so accepting of Jemmott and open with him.

“He spent Christmas with us,” Tibby said. “He was here for Christmas, Thanksgiving, my grandfather’s funeral.”

“In the beginning, she would be like, ‘Yeah he’s a good guy, he travels, he has a good family,’” the sister recounted. “And then it turned into, you know, ‘He won’t give me my space.’ He would show up at her job sometimes. She’d be like, ‘You can’t do that, I’m working.’

“He wouldn’t give her her space and he didn’t respect those boundaries she was setting.”

Tibby said the two met on social media, and in the end, it was their undoing.

“One of her last straws was when she posted a baby picture on her Instagram story and he accused her of having a new follower,” the sister recalled. “And she got fed up and blocked him. Then he started texting her. He would keep track.

“I’m like, you have enough time in a day? Why don’t you focus on your career, focus on bettering yourself instead of looking at how many people someone’s following or if there’s a new follower.”

About a week ago, the victim finally called it quits, according to Tibby.

“He wouldn’t stop texting her,” she said. “I literally told her like, you know, don’t respond. He was sending her stuff about church … He sent her a video of some guy preaching about how you’re meant to be with the people in your life.”

The texts were annoying, but Tibby said her sister wasn’t scared.

“He didn’t threaten her,” she said. “It was more like, ‘Please talk to me, I love you.’ That was it. At least from what I’ve seen.”

She said the boyfriend was in their home about two weeks before the stabbing.

“He was here on May 5 eating a f–king burrito,” she said. “That same day he went to my grandma’s house to play bingo. He sat there that day playing bingo.”

Her father said the boyfriend seemed like a nice guy.

“You know, he works,” Henry Rodriguez said. “He was a manager at the T-Mobile. He was not a problem guy. Easygoing.”

Tibby said her younger sister loved dogs and used to pet sit for neighbors.

“She wanted to be a veterinarian tech,” she said.

The sisters were inseparable.

“We even had matching tattoos,” she said, pointing to a star behind her ear and another symbol on her hip … a euphoria star. My first tattoo that I got with my sister is this one here. She has it on the same side. It’s a symbol of love, life and loyalty. She has them in the same spot. I got the star last year with her.”

The victim’s mother, Mehira Rodriguez, was left devastated by the slaying.

“She was a good girl,” she said. “She was going to work. I’m dying with hurt. Why he do that to my daughter? We opened the door to my house. I can’t believe it — he killed her. Why?”